J. B. De Rossi
(R.C.): De Christianis monumentis ijcquvn exhibentibus, in the third
volume of Pitra's "Spicilegium Solesmense." Paris, 1855. Also his
great work on the Roman Catacombs (Roma Sotteranea, 1864-1867), and his
Archaeol. "Bulletin" (Bulletino di Archeologia cristiana,
since 1863).

Christianity
owed its origin
neither to art nor to science, and is altogether independent of both. But it
penetrates and pervades them with its heaven-like nature, and inspires them
with a higher and nobler aim. Art reaches its real perfection in worship, as an
embodiment of devotion in beautiful forms, which afford a pure pleasure, and at
the same time excite and promote devotional feeling. Poetry and music, the most
free and spiritual arts, which present their ideals in word and tone, and lead
immediately from the outward form to the spiritual substance, were an essential
element of worship in Judaism, and passed thence, in the singing of psalms,
into the Christian church.

Not so with the plastic arts of
sculpture and painting, which employ grosser material—stone, wood, color—as the
medium of representation, and, with a lower grade of culture, tend almost
invariably to abuse when brought in contact with worship. Hence the strict
prohibition of these arts by the Monotheistic religions. The Mohammedans follow
in this respect the Jews; their mosques are as bare of images of living beings
as the synagogues, and they abhor the image worship of Greek and Roman
Christians as a species of idolatry.

The ante-Nicene church,
inheriting the Mosaic decalogue, and engaged in deadly conflict with heathen
idolatry, was at first averse to those arts. Moreover her humble condition, her
contempt for all hypocritical show and earthly vanity, her enthusiasm for martyrdom,
and her absorbing expectation of the speedy destruction of the world and
establishment of the millennial kingdom, made her indifferent to the ornamental
part of life. The rigorous Montanists, in this respect the forerunners of the
Puritans, were most hostile to art. But even the highly cultivated Clement of
Alexandria put the spiritual worship of God in sharp contrast to the pictorial
representation of the divine. "The habit of daily view," he says,
"lowers the dignity of the divine, which cannot be honored, but is only
degraded, by sensible material."

Yet this aversion to art seems
not to have extended to mere symbols such as we find even in the Old Testament,
as the brazen serpent and the cherubim in the temple. At all events, after the
middle or close of the second century we find the rude beginnings of Christian
art in the form of significant symbols in the private and social life of the
Christians, and afterwards in public worship. This is evident from Tertullian
and other writers of the third century, and is abundantly confirmed by the
Catacombs, although the age of their earliest pictorial remains is a matter of
uncertainty and dispute.

The origin of these symbols must
be found in the instinctive desire of the Christians to have visible tokens of
religious truth, which might remind them continually of their Redeemer and
their holy calling, and which would at the same time furnish them the best
substitute for the signs of heathen idolatry. For every day they were
surrounded by mythological figures, not only in temples and public places, but
in private houses, on the walls, floors, goblets, seal-rings, and grave-stones.
Innocent and natural as, this effort was, it could easily lead, in the less
intelligent multitude, to confusion of the sign with the thing signified, and
to many a superstition. Yet this result was the less apparent in the first
three centuries, because in that period artistic works were mostly confined to
the province of symbol and allegory.

From the private recesses of
Christian homes and catacombs artistic representations of holy things passed
into public churches ill the fourth century, but under protest which continued
for a long time and gave rise to the violent image controversies which were not
settled until the second Council of Nicaea (787), in favor of a limited image
worship. The Spanish Council of Elvira (Granada) in 306 first raised such a
protest, and prohibited (in the thirty-sixth canon) "pictures in the
church (picturas
in ecclessia),
lest the objects of veneration and worship should be depicted on the
walls." This sounds almost iconoclastic and puritanic; but in view of the
numerous ancient pictures and sculptures in the catacombs, the prohibition must
be probably understood as a temporary measure of expediency in that transition
period.467

Hermann Fulda:
Das Kreuz und die Kreuzigung, Eine antiquarische
Untersuchung. Breslau,
1878. Polemical against the received views since Lipsius,. See a full list of
literature in Fulda, pp. 299-328.

E. Dobbert: Zur
Enttehungsgeschichte des Kreuzes, Leipzig, 1880.

The oldest and dearest, but also
the, most abused, of the primitive Christian symbols is the cross, the sign of
redemption, sometimes alone, sometimes with the Alpha and Omega, sometimes with
the anchor of hope or the palm of peace. Upon this arose, as early as the
second century, the custom of making the sign of the cross469on rising, bathing, going out,
eating, in short, on engaging in any affairs of every-day life; a custom
probably attended in many cases even in that age, with superstitious confidence
in the magical virtue of this sign; hence Tertullian found it necessary to
defend the Christians against the heathen charge of worshipping the cross (staurolatria).470

Cyprian and the Apostolical
Constitutions mention the sign of the cross as a part of the baptismal rite,
and Lactantius speaks of it as effective against the demons in the baptismal
exorcism. Prudentius recommends it as a preservative against temptations and
bad dreams. We find as frequently, particularly upon ornaments and tombs, the
monogram of the name of Christ, X P, usually combined in the cruciform
character, either alone, or with the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, "the
first and the last;" in later cases with the addition "In the
sign."471 Soon
after Constantine's victory over Maxentius by the aid of the Labarum (312),
crosses were seen on helmets, bucklers, standards, crowns, sceptres, coins and
seals, in various forms.472

The cross was despised by the
heathen Romans on account of the crucifixion, the disgraceful punishment of
slaves and the worst criminals; but the Apologists reminded them of the
unconscious recognition of the salutary sign in the form of their standards and
triumphal symbols, and of the analogies in nature, as the form of man with the
outstretched arm, the flying bird, and the sailing ship.473 Nor was the symbolical use of the cross confined to the Christian
church, but is found among the ancient Egyptians, the Buddhists in India, and
the Mexicans before the conquest, and other heathen nations, both as a symbol
of blessing and a symbol of curse.474

The cross and the Lord's Prayer
may be called the greatest martyrs in Christendom. Yet both the superstitious
abuse and the puritanic protest bear a like testimony to the significance of
the great fact of which it reminds us.

The crucifix, that is the sculptured or carved representation of
our Saviour attached to the cross, is of much later date, and cannot be clearly
traced beyond the middle of the sixth century. It is not mentioned by any
writer of the Nicene and Chalcedonian age. One of the oldest known crucifixes,
if not the very oldest, is found in a richly illuminated Syrian copy of the
Gospels in Florence from the year 586.475 Gregory of Tours (d. 595) describes a crucifix in the church of
St. Genesius, in Narbonne, which presented the crucified One almost entirely
naked.476 But this
gave offence, and was veiled, by order of the bishop, with a curtain, and only
at times exposed to the people. The Venerable Bede relates that a crucifix,
bearing on one side the Crucified, on the other the serpent lifted up by Moses,
was brought from Rome to the British cloister of Weremouth in 686.477

Note.

The first symbol of the
crucifixion was the cross alone; then followed the cross and the lamb—either
the lamb with the cross on the head or shoulder, or the lamb fastened on the
cross; then the figure of Christ in connection with the cross—either Christ holding
it in his right hand (on the sarcophagus of Probus, d. 395), or Christ with the
cross in the background (in the church of St. Pudentiana, built 398); at last
Christ nailed to the cross.

An attempt has been made to trace the crucifixes back to
the third or second century, in consequence of the discovery, in 1857, of a
mock-crucifix on the wall in the ruins of the imperial palaces on the western
declivity of the Palatine hill in Rome, which is preserved in the Museo
Kircheriano. It shows the figure of a crucified man with the head of an ass or
a horse, and a human figure kneeling before it, with the inscription:
"Alexamenos worships his God."478 This figure was no doubt scratched on the wall by some heathen
enemy to ridicule a Christian slave or page of the imperial household, or
possibly even the emperor Alexander Severus (222-235), who, by his religious
syncretism, exposed himself to sarcastic criticism. The date of the caricature
is uncertain; but we know that in the second century the Christians, like the
Jews before them, were charged with the worship of an ass, and that at that
time there were already Christians in the imperial palace.479 After the third Century this silly charge disappears. Roman
archaeologists (P. Garrucci, P. Mozzoni, and Martigny) infer from this
mock-crucifix that crucifixes were in use among Christians already at the close
of the second century, since the original precedes the caricature. But this
conjecture is not supported by any evidence. The heathen Caecilius in Minucius
Felix (ch. 10) expressly testifies the absence of Christian simulacra. As the oldest pictures of
Christ, so far as we know, originated not among the orthodox Christians, but
among the heretical and half heathenish Gnostics, so also the oldest known
representation of the crucifix was a mock-picture from the hand of a
heathen—an excellent illustration of the word of Paul that the preaching of
Christ crucified is foolishness to the Greeks.

§ 78. Other Christian Symbols.

The following symbols, borrowed
from the Scriptures, were frequently represented in the catacombs, and relate
to the virtues and duties of the Christian life: The dove, with or without the
olive branch, the type of simplicity and innocence;480the ship, representing sometimes
the church, as safely sailing through the flood of corruption, with reference
to Noah's ark, sometimes the individual soul on its voyage to the heavenly home
under the conduct of the storm-controlling Saviour; the palm-branch, which the
seer of the Apocalypse puts into the hands of the elect, as the sign of
victory;481the anchor, the figure of hope;482the lyre, denoting festal joy
and sweet harmony;483the cock, an admonition to watchfulness, with
reference to Peter's fall;484the hart which pants for the fresh water-brooks;485and the vine which, with its
branches and clusters, illustrates the union of the Christians with Christ
according to the parable, and the richness and joyfulness of Christian life.486'

The phoenix, the symbol of
rejuvenation and of the resurrection, is derived from the well-known heathen
myth.487

§ 79 Historical and
Allegorical Pictures

From these emblems there was but
one step to iconographic representations. The Bible furnished rich material for
historical, typical, and allegorical pictures, which are found in the catacombs
and ancient monuments. Many of them (late from the third or even the second
century.

The favorite pictures from the
Old Testament are Adam and Eve, the rivers of Paradise, the ark of Noah, the
sacrifice of Isaac, the passage through the Red Sea, the giving of the law,
Moses smiting the rock, the deliverance of Jonah, Jonah naked under the gourd
the translation of Elijah, Daniel in the lions' den, the three children in the
fiery furnace. Then we have scenes from the Gospels, and from apostolic and
post-apostolic history, such as the adoration of the Magi, their meeting with
Herod, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the healing of the paralytic, the
changing water into wine, the miraculous feeding of five thousand, the ten
virgins, the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry into Jerusalem, the Holy
Supper, the portraits of St. Peter and St. Paul.488

The passion and crucifixion were
never represented in the early monuments, except by the symbol of the cross.

Occasionally we find also
mythological representations, as Psyche with wings, and playing with birds and
flowers (an emblem of immortality), Hercules, Theseus, and especially Orpheus,
who with his magic song quieted the storm and tamed the wild beasts.

Perhaps Gnosticism had a
stimulating effect in art, as it had in theology. At all events the sects of
the Carpocratians, the Basilideans, and the Manichaeans cherished art.
Nationality also had something to do with this branch of life. The Italians are
by nature art artistic people, and shaped their Christianity accordingly.
Therefore Rome is preëminently the home of Christian art.

The earliest pictures in the
catacombs are artistically the best, and show the influence of classic models
in the beauty and grace of form. From the fourth century there is a rapid
decline to rudeness and stiffness, and a transition to the Byzantine type.

Some writers489have represented this primitive
Christian art merely as pagan art in its decay, and even the Good Shepherd as a
copy of Apollo or Hermes. But while the form is often an imitation, the spirit
is altogether different, and the myths are understood as unconscious prophecies
and types of Christian verities, as in the Sibylline books. The relation of
Christian art to mythological art somewhat resembles the relation of biblical
Greek to classical Greek. Christianity could not at once invent a new art any
more than a new language, but it emancipated the old from the service of
idolatry and immorality, filled it with a deeper meaning, and consecrated it to
a higher aim.

The blending of classical
reminiscences and Christian ideas is best embodied in the beautiful symbolic
pictures of the Good Shepherd and of Orpheus.490

The former was the most favorite
figure, not only in the Catacombs, but on articles of daily use, as rings,
cups, and lamps. Nearly one hundred and fifty such pictures have come down to
us. The Shepherd, an appropriate symbol of Christ, is usually represented as a
handsome, beardless, gentle youth, in light costume, with a girdle and sandals,
with the flute and pastoral staff, carrying a lamb on his shoulder, standing
between two or more sheep that look confidently up to him. Sometimes he feeds a
large flock on green pastures. If this was the popular conception of Christ, it
stood in contrast with the contemporaneous theological idea of the homely
appearance of the Saviour, and anticipated the post-Constantinian conception.

The picture of Orpheus is twice
found in the cemetery of Domitilla, and once in that of Callistus. One on the
ceiling in Domitilla, apparently from the second century, is especially rich:
it represents the mysterious singer, seated in the centre on a piece of rock,
playing on the lyre his enchanting melodies to wild and tame animals—the lion,
the wolf, the serpent, the horse, the ram—at his feet—and the birds in the trees;491around the central figure are
several biblical scenes, Moses smiting the rock, David aiming the sling at
Goliath (?), Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus. The heathen
Orpheus, the reputed author of monotheistic hymns (the Orphica), the centre of
so many mysteries, the fabulous charmer of all creation, appears here either as
a symbol and type of Christ Himself,492or rather, like the heathen
Sibyl, an antitype and unconscious prophet of Christ, announcing and
foreshadowing Him as the conqueror of all the forces of nature, as the
harmonizer of all discords, and as ruler over life and death.

§ 80. Allegorical Representations of Christ.

Pictures of Christ came into use
slowly and gradually, as the conceptions concerning his personal appearance
changed. The Evangelists very wisely keep profound silence on the subject, and
no ideal which human genius may devise, can do justice to Him who was God
manifest in the flesh.

In the ante-Nicene age the
strange notion prevailed that our Saviour, in the state of his humiliation, was
homely, according to a literal interpretation of the Messianic prophecy:
"He hath no form nor comeliness."493 This was the opinion of Justin Martyr,494Tertullian,495and even of the spiritualistic
Alexandrian divines Clement,496and Origen.497 A true and healthy feeling leads rather to the opposite view; for
Jesus certainly had not the physiognomy of a sinner, and the heavenly purity
and harmony of his soul must in some way have shone, through the veil of his
flesh, as it certainly did on the Mount of Transfiguration. Physical deformity
is incompatible with the Old Testament idea of the priesthood, how much more
with the idea of the Messiah.

Those fathers, however, had the
state of humiliation alone in their eye. The exalted Redeemer they themselves
viewed as clothed with unfading beauty and glory, which was to pass from Him,
the Head, to his church also, in her perfect millennial state.498 We have here, therefore, not an essential opposition made between
holiness and beauty, but only a temporary separation. Nor did the ante-Nicene
fathers mean to deny that Christ, even in the days of his humiliation, had a
spiritual beauty which captivated susceptible souls. Thus Clement of Alexandria
distinguishes between two kinds of beauty, the outward beauty of the flesh,
which soon fades away, and the beauty of the soul, which consists in moral excellence
and is permanent. "That the Lord Himself," he says, "was
uncomely in aspect, the Spirit testifies by Isaiah: 'And we saw Him, and he had
no form nor comeliness; but his form was mean, inferior to men.' Yet who was
more admirable than the Lord? But it
was not the beauty of the flesh visible to the eye, but the true beauty of both
soul and body, which He exhibited, which in the former is beneficence; in the
latter—that is, the flesh—immortality."499 Chrysostom went further: he understood Isaiah's description to
refer merely to the scenes of the passion, and took his idea of the personal
appearance of Jesus from the forty-fifth Psalm, where he is represented as
"fairer than the children of men." Jerome and Augustin had the same
view, but there was at that time no authentic picture of Christ, and the imagination
was left to its own imperfect attempts to set forth that human face divine
which reflected the beauty of sinless holiness.

The first representations of
Christ were purely allegorical. He appears now as a shepherd, who lays
down his life for the sheep,500or carries the lost sheep on his
shoulders;501as a lamb, who bears the sin of the world;502more rarely as a ram, with
reference to the substituted victim in the history of Abraham and Isaac;503frequently as a fisher.504 Clement of Alexandria, in his hymn, calls Christ the "Fisher
of men that are saved, who with his sweet life catches the pure fish out of the
hostile flood in the sea of iniquity."

The most favorite symbol seems
to have been that of the fish. It was the double symbol of the Redeemer and the
redeemed. The corresponding Greek Ichthys
is a pregnant anagram, containing the initials of the words: "Jesus
Christ, Son of God, Saviour."505 In some pictures the mysterious fish is swimming in the water with
a plate of bread and a cup of wine on his back, with evident allusion to the
Lord's Supper. At the same time the fish represented the soul caught in the net
of the great Fisher of men and his servants, with reference to Matt. 4:19;
comp. 13:47. Tertullian connects the symbol with the water of baptism, saying:506 "We little fishes (pisciculi) are born by our Fish (secundum jICqUS
nostrum), Jesus
Christ in water, and can thrive only by continuing in the water;" that is
if we are faithful to our baptismal covenant, and preserve the grace there
received. The pious fancy made the fish a symbol of the whole mystery of the
Christian salvation. The anagrammatic or hieroglyphic use of the Greek Ichthys and the Latin Piscis-Christus belonged to the Disciplina Arcani, and was a testimony of the
ancient church to the faith in Christ's person as the Son of God, and his work
as the Saviour of the world. The origin of this symbol must be traced beyond
the middle of the second century, perhaps to Alexandria, where there was a strong
love for mystic symbolism, both among the orthodox and the Gnostic heretics.507 It is familiarly mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and
Tertullian, and is found on ancient remains in the Roman catacombs, marked on
the grave-stones, rings, lamps, vases, and wall-pictures508

The Ichthys-symbol went out of
use before the middle of the fourth century, after which it is only found
occasionally as a reminiscence of olden times.

Previous to the time of
Constantine, we find no trace of an image of Christ, properly speaking, except
among the Gnostic Carpocratians,509and in the case of the heathen
emperor Alexander Severus, who adorned his domestic chapel, as a sort of
syncretistic Pantheon, with representatives of all religions.510 The above-mentioned idea of the uncomely personal appearance of
Jesus, the entire silence of the Gospels about it, and the Old Testament
prohibition of images, restrained the church from making either pictures or
statues of Christ, until in the Nicene age a great change took place, though
not without energetic and long-continued opposition. Eusebius gives us, from
his own observation, the oldest report of a statue of Christ, which was said to
have been erected by the woman with the issue of blood, together with her own
statue, in memory of her cure, before her dwelling at Caesarea Philippi
(Paneas).511 But the
same historian, in a letter to the empress Constantia (the sister of
Constantine and widow of Licinius), strongly protested against images of Christ,
who had laid aside his earthly servant form, and whose heavenly glory
transcends the conception and artistic skill of man.512

It was formerly supposed that no
picture of the Virgin existed before the Council of Ephesus (431), which
condemned Nestorius and sanctioned the theotokos, thereby giving solemn sanction and a strong impetus to
the cultus of Mary. But several pictures are now traced, with a high degree of
probability, to the third, if not the second century. From the first five
centuries nearly fifty representations of Mary have so far been brought to the
notice of scholars, most of them in connection with the infant Saviour.

The oldest is a fragmentary
wall-picture in the cemetery of Priscilla: it presents Mary wearing a tunic and
cloak, in sitting posture, and holding at her breast the child, who turns his
face round to the beholder. Near her stands a young and beardless man (probably
Joseph) clothed in the pallium,
holding a book-roll in one hand, pointing to the star above with the other, and
looking upon the mother and child with the expression of joy; between and above
the figures is the star of Bethlehem; the whole represents the happiness of a
family without the supernatural adornments of dogmatic reflection.513 In the same cemetery of Priscilla there are other frescos,
representing (according to De Rossi and Garrucci) the annunciation by the
angel, the adoration of the Magi, and the finding of the Lord in the temple.
The adoration of the Magi (two or four, afterwards three) is a favorite part of
the pictures of the holy family. In the oldest picture of that kind in the
cemetery of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, Mary sits on a chair, holding the babe
in her lap, and receiving the homage of two Magi, one on each side, presenting
their gifts on a plate.514 In later
pictures the manger, the ox and the ass, and the miraculous star are added to
the scene.

The frequent pictures of a lady
in praying attitude, with uplifted or outstretched arms (Orans or Orante),
especially when found in company with the Good Shepherd, are explained by Roman
Catholic archaeologists to mean the church or the blessed Virgin, or both
combined, praying for sinners.515 But figures of praying men as well as women are abundant in the
catacombs, and often represent the person buried in the adjacent tomb, whose
names are sometimes given. No Ora pro nobis, no Ave Maria, no
Theotokos or Deipara appears there. The pictures of
the Orans are like those of other women, and show no traces of Mariolatry.
Nearly all the representations in the catacombs keep within the limits of the
gospel history. But after the fourth century, and in the degeneracy of art,
Mary was pictured in elaborate mosaics, and on gilded glasses, as the crowned
queen of heaven, seated on a throne, in bejewelled purple robes, and with a
nimbus of glory, worshipped by angels and saints.

The noblest pictures of Mary, in
ancient and modern times, endeavor to set forth that peculiar union of virgin
purity and motherly tenderness which distinguish "the Wedded Maid and
Virgin Mother" from ordinary women, and exert such a powerful charm upon
the imagination and feelings of Christendom. No excesses of Mariolatry, sinful
as they are, should blind us to the restraining and elevating effect of
contemplating, with devout reverence,

"The ideal of all womanhood,

So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good,

So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure."

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

(d) The inverted Latin cross of St. Peter, who
considered himself unworthy to suffer in the upright position like his Lord,
-|-

(e) The Greek cross, consisting of four equally long
arms, +

(f) The double cross,
-|-

--|--

|

(g) The triple cross (used by the Pope), -|-

--|--

---|---

|

The chief forms of the monogram are:

[Six figures are inserted here. Ed.]

The story of the miraculous
invention and raising of the true cross of Christ by Helena, the mother of
Constantine, belongs to the Nicene age. The connection of the cross with the a and w arose from the Apocalyptic designation of Christ
(Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13), which is thus explained by Prudentius (Cathem. hymn.
IX. 10-12):

474 When the temple of Serapis was destroyed (a.d. 390), signs of the cross were found beneath the
hieroglyphics, and heathen and Christians referred it to their religion.
Socrates, H. E. V. 17; Sozomenus, VI[. 15; Theodoret, V. 22. On the
Buddhist cross see Medhurst, China, p. 217. At the discovery of Mexico
the Spaniards found the sign of the cross as an object of worship in the idol
temples at Anahuac. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, III. 338-340. See on
the heathen use of the Cross, Haslam, Mortillet, Zöckler (l.c., 7 sqq.),
and Brinton, Myths of the New World; also an article on "The
pre-Christian Cross," in the "Edinburgh Review," Jan. 1870.
Zöckler says (p. 95): "Alter FIuch und Segen, alles
Todeselend und alle Lebensherrlichkeit, die durch dir vorchristliche Menschheit
ausgebreitet gewesen, erscheinen in dem Kreuze auf Golgatha conrentrirt zum
wundervollsten Gebilde, der religiös sittlichen Entwicklung unseres
Geschlechtes."

486 John 15:1-6. The parables of the Good Shepherd, and of the Vine
and the Branches, both recorded only by St. John, seem to have been the most
prominent in the mind of the primitive Christians, as they are in the
catacombs. "What they valued" (says Stanley, Christ. Inst., p.
288), "what they felt, was new moral Influence, a new life stealing
through their veins, a new health imparted to their frames, a new courage
breathing in their faces, like wine to a weary laborer, like sap in the hundred
branches of a spreading tree, like juice in thousand clusters of a spreading
vine." But more important than this was the idea of vital union of the
believers with Christ and among each other, symbolized by the vine and its
branches.

487 The fabulous phoenix is nowhere mentioned in the Bible, and is
first used by Clement of Rome, Ad Cor. c. 25, and by Tertiillian,
De Resur. c. 13. Comp. Pliny Hist. Nat. XIII. 4.

488 For details the reader is referred to the great illustrated works
of Perre. De Rossi, Garrucci, Parker, Roller, Northcote and Brownlow, etc.

497 Contr. Cels. VI. c. 75, where Origen quotes from Celsus
that Christ's person did not differ from others in grandeur or beauty or
strength, but was, as the Christians report, "little, ill favored and
ignoble" (To; sw'ma mikro;n kai;
duseide;" kai; ajgene;" h\vn). He admits the "ill-favored," but denies the
"ignoble," and doubts the "little," of which there is no
certain evidence. He then quotes the language of Isaiah 53, but adds the
description of Ps. 45:3, 4 (Sept.), which represents the Messiah as a king
arrayed in beauty. Celsus used this false tradition of the supposed
uncomeliness of Jesus as an argument against his divinity, and an objection to
the Christian religion.

499 Paedag. lib. III.c. 1, which treats of true beauty. Compare
also the last chapter in the second book, which is directed against the
extravagant fondness of females for dress and jewels ornaments the true beauty
of the soul, which "blossoms out in the flesh, exhibiting the amiable
comeliness of self-control, whenever the character, like a beam of light,
gleams in the form."

505 \ICQYS = 'jI-hsou'" C-risto;" Q-eou' U-iJo;" S-wthvr. Comp. Augustin, De Civit. Dei
xviii. 23 (Jesus
Christus Dei Filius Salvator), The acrostic in the Sibyline Books (lib. viii. vs.
217 sqq.) adds to this word staurov", the Schultza (Katak., p.
129), not satisfied with this explanation, goes back to Matt. 7:10, where fish
(ijcquv") and serpent (o[fi") are contrasted, and suggested a
contrast between Christ and the devil (comp. Apoc. 12:14, 1. 2 Cor. 11:3)
Rather artificial. Merz derives the symbol from o[yon(hence
ojyavrionin John 21:9) in the sense of "fish, flesh."
In Palestine fish was, next to bread, the principal food, and a savory
accompaniment of bread. It figures prominently in the miraculous; feeding of
the multitude (John 6:9, 11), and in the meal of the risen Saviour on the
shares of the Lake of Tiberias (John 21:9, ojyavrion kai; a[rton). By an allegorical stretch, the fish might thus; become to the mind of
the early church a symbol of Christ's body, as the heavenly food which he gave
for the salvation of men (John 6:51).

508 The oldest Ichthys-monument known so far was discovered in 1865 in
the Cœmeterium Domitillae, a hitherto inaccessible part of the Roman catacombs,
and is traced by Cavalier De Rossi to the first century, by Becker to the first
half of the second. It is in a wall picture, representing three persons with three
loaves of bread and a fish. In other pictures we find fish, bread, and wine,
with evident allusion to the miraculous feeding (Matt. 15:17), and the meals of
the risen Saviour with his disciples (Luke, ch. 3; John, ch. 21). Paulinus
calls Christ "panis ipse verus et aquae vivae piscis." See the interesting illustrators in
Garrucci, Martigny, Kraus, and other archaeological works.

511 H. E. VII. 18. Comp. Matt. 9:20. Probably that alleged
statue of Christ was a monument of Hadrian, or some other emperor to whom the
Phoenicians did obeisance, in the form of a kneeling woman. Similar
representations are seen on coins, particularly from the age of Hadrian. Julian
the Apostate destroyed the two statues, and substituted his own, which was
riven by lightning (Sozom. V. 21).

512 A fragment of this letter is preserved in the acts of the
iconoclastic Council of 754, and in the sixth act of the Second Council of
Nicaea, 787. See Euseb. Opp. ed. Migne, II.col. 1545, and Harduin, Conc.
IV. 406.

513 See the picture in De Rossi, Plate iv., Northcote and Brownlow,
Plate xx (II. 140), and in Schultze, Katak., p. 151. De Rossi ("
Bulletino, " 1865, 23, as quoted by N. and B.) declares it either coëval
with the first Christian art, or little removed from it, either of the age of the
Flavii or of Trajan and Hadrian, or at the very latest, of the first Antonines.
"On the roof of this tomb there was figured in fine stucco the Good
Shepherd between two sheep, and some other subject, now nearly defaced."
De Rossi supports his view of the high antiquity of this Madonna by the
superior, almost classical style of art, and by the fact that the catacomb of
Priscilla, the mother of Pudens, is one of the oldest. But J. H. Parker, an
experienced antiquary, assigns this picture to a.d. 523. The young man is, according to De Rossi, Isaiah or
some other prophet; but Marriott and Schultze refer him to Joseph, which is
more probable, although the later tradition of the Greek church derived from
the Apocryphal Gospels and strengthened by the idea of the perpetual virginity,
represents him as an old man with several children from a previous marriage
(the brethren of Jesus, changed into cousins by Jerome and the Latin church).
Northcote and Brownlow (II. 141) remark: "St. Joseph certainly appears in
some of the sarcophagi; and in the most ancient of them as a young and
beardless man, generally clad in a tunic. In the mosaics of St. Mary Major's,
which are of the fifth century, and in which he appears four or five times, he
is shown of nature age, if not old; and from that time forward this became the
more common mode of representing him."

514 See Plate xx. in N. and B. II 140. Schultze (p. 153) traces this
picture to the beginning of the third century.

515 According to the usual Roman Catholic interpretation of the
apocalyptic vision of the woman clothed with the sun, and bringing forth a
man-child (12:1, 5). Cardinal Newman reasons inconclusively in a letter to Dr.
Pusey on his Eirenicon (p. 62): "I do not deny that, under the
image of the woman, the church is signified; but ... the holy apostle would not
have spoken of the church under this particular image unless there had existed
a blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on high, and the object of veneration of
all the faithful." When accompanied by the Good Shepherd the Orans is
supposed by Northcote and Brownlow (II. 137) to represent Mar y a., ; the new
Eve, as the Shepherd is the new Adam. It must be admitted that the parallel between
Mary and Eve is as old as Irenaeus, and contains the fruitful germ of
Mariolatry, but in those pictures no such contrast is presented.